Ray (Ex) writes:
Expressions like "ESP's critics, a group that includes
most
mainstream scientists," is a gratuitous reference to the authority of scientists. I think that it would be closer
to the truth to say that most scientists have never paid any serious attention to ESP, so that the basis which
that
majority criticizes ESP is its own lack of knowledge.
Actually, that's false. Nearly every scientist that I have ever worked with and studied with has given quite a bit of thought to this and related issues. Having spent years in college and graduate schools, and in "the real world" as well, I can so that your caricature of scientists is false. Again, you are creating strawmen to attack.
That to me is not very reassuring. Many articles would be much better if the science lobby started to show some restraint.
Huh? Who the hell are "the science lobby"? Please stop your recriminations against "the scientists". You keep making strawman arguments, with a clear attempt at the deligitimization of anyone who tries to study controversial issues in a controlled setting.
There is no "science lobby", and practically every scientist I have ever discussed this issue with has been open to accepting _any_ claim, IF there is proof. Anecdotes, however, do not rise to the level of proof. You just seem mad because your side has never been able to offer any proof that the rest of the world will accept.
If you truly believe in these claims, then spend your time gathering more proof, and less time making strawman ad homenim attacks on "the science lobby". The more you do this, the less your position is accepted.
A single well-written paragraph can more than adequately represent the views of the detractors. Trying to debunk concepts that have never been proven, with equally questionable data only makes for an article full of
sniping.
In other words, dump NPOV. Because NPOV demands precisely the format that you want to remove. In contrast to your false claims about scientists, a large number of scientists have studied ESP, telepathy, telekinesis and other similar alleged phenomenon for well over a century. Controlled experiments have been run and repeated hundreds of times.
Articles on these subjects must, according to our NPOV policy, report both the alleged phenomenon, and on the many experiments run to study such phenomenon. Your format would remove the vast majority of material on this subject, thus biasing the article in favaor of paranormal claims made without proof.
Credible sources for both sides of this argument are
available,
Yet this is precisely what you seem to be annoyed with; large amounts of controlled scientific studies have been published in peer-reviewed journals, but you get angry when they are reported on within our articles. You keep advocating that we remove nearly all POV's, and reduce our articles to a "He said, She said" format. Sorry, but that is not the way that NPOV works.
Robert (RK)
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Robert wrote:
If you truly believe in these claims, then spend your time gathering more proof, and less time making strawman ad homenim attacks on "the science lobby". The more you do this, the less your position is accepted.
I would be most interested to hear where you got the impression that Ray believes in ESP. Such was neither stated nor implied by his email, and I have no clue whatsoever of his stance on the issue. I simply saw an attempt to point out a neutrality problem.
There is also no reason to get piqued over his use of the term "science lobby". It is a generic label for advocates of mainstream science. He was not implying some sort of overarching organization or cabal.
If Ray is mistaken about something, by all means offer him corrected information, but there is no reason to either assume malice on his part or direct malice at him.
Nicholas Knight wrote
There is also no reason to get piqued over his use of the term "science lobby". It is a generic label for advocates of mainstream science.
Is that so? Not familiar to me, so I took the trouble of looking through the first 100 Google hits. Not much except in relation to funding; which is what I expected - the classic work of [[F. M. Cornford]], nearly a century ago, pointed out that scientists do lobby, for money.
So, it may be 'generic', but not that common. WP has no article about [[science lobby]]. More to the point, Disinfopedia has none, though I found some stuff about pro-GM lobbying.
So, seems to me this is jargon.
Charles